Several years ago, I attended a worship event where I was surrounded by an eclectic group of 20s and 30s.
On several occasions that evening, the primary speaker referred to “our Savior.”
It’s not a novel description of Jesus to be sure, but it nevertheless impacted me with its power and precision.
He’s not “my Savior.” He’s not “the Savior.” In that setting of 350 young adults, Jesus was and is “our Savior.”
As I thought about why that seemingly innocuous statement hit me with such force, I realized: “Everyone here who believes in Jesus is connected by confession.”
And I mean confession in both senses of the word:
1. The group was connected by the confession that we need a Savior. Our lives are naturally a wreck, we are dominated by our sin; and so we need a rescuer, we long for a deliverer. It’s confession-booth confession: Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.
2. Yet that common faith in “our Savior” connects by a different sort of confession as well: the verbal affirmation that not only do we need a Savior but we have been found by one and his name is Jesus. As Paul says in Romans 10:10: “if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” That confession has nothing to do with regret for sins and everything to do with boldly declaring that Jesus is Lord and Casear is not.
Our Savior? For a group of people who acknowledge that their lives are inherently flawed and that Christ alone redeems those flaws, that’s exactly who he is.